


come and find me

by saffronHeliotrope



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Animal Death, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Humanstuck, It Gets Better, Memory Loss, Post-Sburb, beta kids - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-06-04
Updated: 2017-02-16
Packaged: 2017-12-13 22:26:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/829565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saffronHeliotrope/pseuds/saffronHeliotrope
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Won : lost : : lost : found.<br/>A series of vignettes about finding.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. John: found

**Author's Note:**

> _if I could trace the lines that ran_  
>  _between your smile and your sleight of hand_  
>  _I'd guess that you put something up my sleeve_  
>  _now every time I see your face the bells ring in a far-off place_  
>  _we can find each other this way I believe_  
>  \--[Josh Ritter](http://youtu.be/XtC8OKmrr5A)

There he is again, the guy on the subway. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning like clockwork, he’s on the train when you get on at Porter, and he gets off at Kendall with the crowds of students headed for MIT, while you go one more stop across the bridge to MGH.

He draws your eyes like a candle in a dark room, and you’re not even sure why. Maybe it’s the shock of white-blond hair. Maybe it’s the dark aviators that he’s always wearing, no matter the weather, no matter that you’re riding in a tunnel under Cambridge’s wintry streets. His face is always completely expressionless but over and over you find yourself staring like a creep.

You can’t remember the first time you noticed him -- it was more like a gradual growing awareness over the course of the last few months, and slowly you found yourself expecting him, looking for him, aligning yourself with him like a compass needle finding home. In the stressful, sleep-deprived, bruise-dark blur that has been your life lately -- class, clinicals, endless study, shuttling continually between your tiny apartment and the hospital and the library, shitty takeout meals because no matter how your dad tried to instill good habits in you it still sucks to cook for one -- he’s like a touchstone of clarity. You find yourself in the same subway car for fifteen minutes three mornings a week, and suddenly everything’s quiet and you can breathe.

You can’t figure it out.

Something about him calls up that old achy nameless loss that you thought you’d kicked years ago. For some reason he makes you think about the time you got really sick when you were a kid, the horrible virus out of nowhere that had you feverish and delirious for days. It was right after your thirteenth birthday and it’s still the sickest you’ve ever been. You can’t remember, but your dad told you later that every time he turned his back you staggered over to your computer, and he had to carry you back to your bed while you shouted nonsense. You think in retrospect that you scared the living daylights out of him. It’s hazy, but you’re pretty sure you were terrified yourself.

When you got too weak to climb out of bed, you lay and stared blindly at the ceiling and knew with all the certainty of fevered delusion that the world was ending and you were supposed to stop it but couldn’t.

By the time you were strong enough to wobble around again, the world hadn’t ended, but your computer was inexplicably dead, motherboard fried, data completely irretrievable. You’d been inconsolable. Your dad got you a new computer, but it wasn’t the same, and when you sat down at your desk you couldn’t even remember what you used to do online all day.

You were so lonely it was like a chest wound, and you couldn’t remember why. There were gaps somewhere you couldn’t see, missing pieces you couldn’t even start to look for.

Your dad and your intrinsic restlessness wouldn’t let you wallow, and time went by and eventually the ache blurred and numbed. You kept yourself busy. In high school, you filled your time with music and sports, took the hardest classes you could. Hours of homework gave you something to focus on. In college, pre-med seemed like a good idea, so you buried yourself in your books, dated a bit, kept your head down. Every logical step, one after another, until you found yourself here.

You didn’t even realize the chest wound was still there until you saw him, and it threatened to engulf you again.

***

Friday: you sit down opposite him and a few seats away. He’s whip-thin and coiled in his black wool coat, shoulders hunched in so as not to crowd the people on either side. Red headphones -- the expensive-looking kind -- over his ears. You wonder what he’s listening to.

You’re staring, you realize. You don’t think he noticed, but with those shades you’d never know where he’s looking. You turn away guiltily, sneak glances until he gets off the train at Kendall.

When the train comes out into the light over the bridge, your phone buzzes in your pocket. Your girlfriend says she can’t meet you after class tonight -- she’ll be working late.

It’s ok. You may as well get some more library time this weekend anyway.

Monday: you get on the train and he’s standing, facing away, headphones and shades locked in place, head slightly bent, messenger bag slung across his back. You look at the back of his head for ten solid minutes. Something about the curve of his neck where it disappears behind his coat collar makes you hurt just behind your sternum.

Wednesday: it’s just one of those days. You sleep through your alarm and wake up with just enough time to get to your first clinical. You shiver in your coat as you hurry to the T. There’s a storm coming up the coast and everyone says it will be the first real snow of the season, but you can feel that the air is changing; you know it’ll be warm enough by the time the storm hits that it will fall as the gray slushy sleet that makes everyone miserable.

You hear the train coming into the station as you race down the long escalators, and you run for it but the doors close and the train moves out. From the platform you see a flash of ash-blond through a window and the train carries him away. Your disappointment is unexpectedly, unreasonably sharp.

Thursday night, Rachel tells you that she thinks you should both start seeing other people. You’re not really surprised, and not really hurt.

Friday: the storm hit overnight and, as you predicted, the streets are full of mucky slush. You’re early but the train is late -- it’s one of the mysterious vagaries of urban public transport that bad weather makes for slow subways. The platform fills up with anxious rush-hour commuters, slowly overheating in their coats as their boots and umbrellas drip. The collective irritation is palpable.

When the train inches into the station, it’s already pretty full, and the people on the platform surge forward in unison. You shuffle inside, and your eyes go to him instantly: he stands by a pole in the middle of the car, and without even thinking you work your way through the crowd until you’re standing beside him.

Your heart is pounding. Your heart shouldn’t be pounding.

You grab a strap and hang on as the train stutters into motion. He turns his head the slightest bit, and you think he looks at you.  When you surreptitiously look back, he’s turned toward the black window.

You steal glances. You can’t help it. From here you can see a light dusting of freckles across his nose and cheeks, only barely darker than his pale skin. He’s tall, as tall as you, and his features are finely sculpted but somehow brittle, icy. He’s so _still_ , you realize. No extraneous movement, no waste; he’s so tightly held, closely guarded, that you feel a twinge of pain.

There’s a flush rising in your face. This is ridiculous. This is completely ridiculous. What are you doing?

The train’s progress is slow and fitful. Somewhere between Harvard and Central, the conductor brakes hard, and the train lurches to a sudden stop. There’s shouting from standing passengers as people stumble and almost fall. You shift your weight and surf smoothly through it, and so does he, but the girl behind him staggers in her high heels and falls hard against him. He unbalances and falls right into your chest.

You don’t even have time to think; you steady him with a hand on his shoulder, but the movement has sent his headphones tumbling down off his head, and his shades slip. He can’t grab for both at once and goes for the headphones. You reach out with your other hand and neatly catch his glasses before they fall.

You go to hand them back, goofy apologetic smile all ready to break out, but then he turns to you bare-faced, pale fringe of eyelashes lifting, and your eyes lock.

His are red.

It’s like an electric shock, like a seizure, like your brain shorts out; and then you’re seeing flashes one after another, too fast to process:

blue text, red text, lavender and lime, black tar, a hammer, a sword, a pale girl, dog ears, chessboards, bloodstains, golden ship, green sun, gray skin, orange horns, snarling jaws, green skull, destruction, destruction, and death --

\-- and you’d thought you were ready but there was no preparing for this monster spewing malevolent devastation; all your plans, all your heroism and loyalty and bravery toppled like toy soldiers, and you were crying, the girls were already gone, and you were holding this fair-haired boy in your arms and he was clinging to you while reality fell apart around you, and then the universe itself shredded and he was ripped from you, and that’s it, game over, you’d lost, you’d lost, you’d lost.

***

And it’s all gone as quickly as it came. Your vision clears and you’re shaking like a leaf. The girl behind him is apologizing profusely, but he’s not even listening -- he’s blinking rapidly, shock and confused recognition on his face.

You don’t know what that was, you don’t know what it meant, but there’s one word left in your mind, one name, and you say, “Dave.”

At the same time, he says, “John.”

There’s a deep singing certainty somewhere inside you.  _Here, here,_ something is crying, calling.  _Here is the best friend of your soul._

The train moves again and you both stumble, but your hand is still on his shoulder. You’re reluctant to let go of him. You’re afraid you’ll lose him again.

He reaches up and grips your forearm. “I know you,” he says, and his voice is deeper than you expect, husky.

“Yes,” you say. You’re still holding his sunglasses, and you offer them to him. He takes them, slides them back on, letting go of your arm. You drop your hand from his shoulder in embarrassment. But he doesn’t move, doesn’t disappear. “Do you...” you say, and your voice trails away because you’re momentarily thrown by the shades and the impassive face, but screw it, and screw the clinicals you’re going to miss, you’ve been looking for twelve years and you’re not going to mess this up. You clear your throat and try again. “Do you want to get a cup of coffee?”

The corner of his mouth quirks up just the tiniest bit, and suddenly your chest is a helium balloon. “Sure,” he says, and one little missing piece falls into place.


	2. Karkat: coffee

The café is loud and always disgustingly full of people, but it’s the only place in walking distance of your apartment that a) has reliable free wifi, b) makes good plain old regular coffee and doesn’t charge four bucks for a lousy cup, and c) doesn’t make a fuss if you take up a table for the whole day as long as you buy refills on an intermittent basis. Oh, and d) isn’t staffed solely by self-important twee hipster assholes who will preach at hideous length about roasts and grinds and the temperature and pressure of the espresso machines if given half an opportunity. Marco behind the counter gives you your coffee sans lecture, sans anything but fucking _coffee_ , and that’s how you like it.

You’re at your favorite table in the corner where nobody can see your computer screen -- not that you’re watching porn or even doing anything remotely personal or interesting, but you hate the crawling edginess and constant monitoring of neighbors that comes with using a computer in public most of the time. You’ve got your earbuds in and if the café is loud then you can just turn your music up louder.

For once the table beside you is empty and for a moment you just sit and breathe.

Jesus, it’s been a rough few months. You suck utterly at meeting people and have therefore been entirely lonely since you moved here. You’re perpetually scrambling at work _(because you’re a fucking disgrace of a programmer, why did you think this career was a good idea, nice going asshole)_ and you’re starting to think your boss is having serious second thoughts about you. Your apartment was broken into a few weeks ago while you were out -- you’d had your laptop with you, thank Christ, but they took your tv and your xbox and your games and the ridiculous shitty set of fake fighting sickles your best friend gave you back in high school, which you’d claimed to hate but secretly loved and had given pride of place on your living room wall. And seriously, who the fuck would want an idiotic joke of a comic book weapon, other than you?

You feel the helpless anger _(grief, be honest, you pansy)_ mounting up in all your muscles and you lean your elbows on the table, close your eyes and rub your hands over your face. You try to breathe, grounding yourself in the back of the bench behind you, the wall beside you, the empty table like a buffer between you and the rest of the city. You may have gotten yourself backed into a corner, but that also means that nobody can fucking sneak up behind you, and that may be cold comfort but right now you’ll take any goddamn comfort you can get.

And then someone jostles you in sliding around to the seat on the bench side of the empty table, and your eyes fly open, best snarl ready. “Sorry, man,” the guy says as he settles beside you. It might not be the last fucking straw, but it feels like you’ve got precious few straws to go until you snap.

You jam your earbuds farther into your ears and turn your music up, jabbing at the volume button on your keyboard as pointedly as if he were watching or cared that you wanted to block out every sorry iota of his presence. Which he’s not, and doesn’t. You shoot little dagger-glares in his direction but he ignores you completely and wriggles out of his black coat. Red headphones hang around his neck, sleet melting streaks into his white-blond hair, skinny jeans spattered with the disgusting slush that lies an inch deep on the sidewalks. Dark aviator glasses which he hasn’t taken off, even though the sky outside is slate-gray and the inside of the café isn’t exactly glowing.

Also, he’s bouncing his knee up and down under the table, a rhythmic nervous jitter though the rest of him is perfectly still. Your table shivers in sympathy, laptop screen amplifying the tremor into a wobble.

_Hipster douchelord._

You’re going to ignore him.

You scowl at your screen as if you might burn a hole through it with the sheer force of your irritation, and you resolve to do work and only work until the damned web page is done. Though god knows you’re probably going to spend the day like you always do, flipping guiltily back and forth between your assignment and the story you’ve been writing, always thinking about the one while you’re trying to get work done on the other, and you won’t actually make any real progress on either until you’ve wasted the whole day because you’re an incompetent fraud masquerading as an adult, and oh fucking _fantastic_ the douchelord has a friend.

Asshole #2 comes up carrying two oversized mugs, the stupid bowl-shaped kind that are impossible to drink out of and that coffeshops everywhere seem determined to inflict on the world. He gives a stupid smile and slides one of the mugs across the table to the douche. He takes a careful sip of his own drink -- something milky, a fucking latte. Tea for Asshole #1.

You sneak glances as they settle in. Asshole #2 has rectangular glasses and messy black hair in need of a trim. He shrugs off his coat and underneath he’s wearing -- huh. Blue scrubs. Maybe he’s an orderly, or a nurse. You look at him more closely -- bright blue eyes, smile shy but nice, for all that it’s loaded with overlarge front teeth. He doesn’t really look old enough to be a doctor, but hell, you’ve been wrong before. His legs are long and they’re in danger of invading your under-table space. Both of them are obnoxious amounts of tall, you notice with jealous irritation. They’re talking but you can’t hear, not with your music up so loud, and oh shit blue-eyes just glanced at you and caught you looking. You snap your attention back to your computer and type away furiously for a few seconds.

You’re not paying attention to them. You’re not. You poke away at your code, get bored, flip over to your story, re-read a bit, delete the last few sentences you wrote. Garbage.

Beside you, blue-eyes laughs at something, only just loud enough to catch your ear. (Fucking worthless headphones -- noise-canceling, right.) Shit. You can’t concentrate at all, and your curiosity gets the better of you.

Surreptitiously you adjust your earbud so it’s not in so tightly, and turn down the volume on your music.

Blondie is telling blue-eyes about growing up in Houston -- you tune in just in time to hear him say that his brother still lives there in the same apartment. Blue-eyes, face all serious, is amazed that blondie’s brother raised him alone. “Yeah, he’s seventeen years older,” says skinny-jeans. “Didn’t know what the hell he was doing most of the time.” You roll your eyes and crank the music back up. Poor baby. Whatever he had to put up with from a clueless brother, it had to be better than your bullshit life in the foster care system.

If you hadn’t met Gamz – you don’t even know.

You’re not going to think about it.

You put your head down, actually manage to type out a few lines of code that maybe don’t suck, and as a reward you let your attention wander a bit. They’re still at the table beside you, drinks almost gone, still talking intently. Scrubs is leaning forward, talking and gesticulating. Shades nods sharply at something.

You can’t figure them out. They might just be friends getting together for coffee, but the body language is all wrong. They orient themselves toward each other, laser-focused and intent like nothing else exists -- no diffidence, no reserve. You’d think they’ve known each other forever, but you’ve just overheard them doing the getting-to-know-you thing like this is the first time they’ve ever talked. It could be a date -- maybe they were set up and are just meeting -- but ten in the morning on a Friday is a hell of a time for a first date, and besides neither of them pings your gaydar particularly hard. (Maybe blondie, a little. It’s hard to say.)

But they look utterly connected to each other, and you find yourself yearning toward that link. You haven’t felt that bond with another person for months and months.

So you turn the music down again and eavesdrop, and you’re promptly baffled. Blue-eyes is talking about a giant hammer, and shades shakes his head and says, “Yeah, maybe, but I swear to God I had a sword, like a big fuckin’ broadsword, only sometimes it was broken -- does that sound right?”

They go on and on. One of them mentions a giant chess game; the other, lava and scaffolding. They’re goading each other on, correcting each other, adding and editing and straining to remember details. It sounds like they’re trying to remember a movie they saw a long time ago.

“But then there was also a place with tunnels, or maybe hallways,” says shades. “It was always dark. There were -- hell, I don’t know. Machines or big glass tubs or something.”

“I don’t remember that part,” says blue-eyes slowly, frowning.“But wasn’t there... wasn’t there a dog? A big dog?”

Shades jerks forward as if he’s gotten an electric shock. “Yes,” he says. “Yes. It was black. A black dog. Or more like...”

“More like a man with a dog’s head.” The blue eyes have gone wide. “He had wings, too. I remember now.”

“Shit,” says shades. They stare at each other hollowly. They’re not laughing about their mutual discovery the way you might expect. They’re terrified.

Something inside you goes _click._

A man with a dog’s head. Black wings stretching to fill your field of vision. Dark corridors, rooms echoing with the thrum of machinery and ventilation fans. It all feels so familiar in the vaguest way, but every time you reach for it to tease it out, it’s fainter, until you’re not sure it was ever there at all.

You must have seen the same movie when you were a kid. That’s the only explanation.

You find yourself staring blankly through your screen while your music plays softly in your headphones. You’ve lost track of their conversation. Fuck, you shouldn’t even be eavesdropping in the first place, you creeper. You can’t help it. You’re drawn to them now. Blondie gets oddly under your skin, makes you want to push back at him just to see what he’d do and whether you could crack that chill, whether _you_ could make him jitter his knee under the table. But blue-eyes -- you wish you could talk to him, you want that wide unguarded gaze directed toward you. Jesus, he’s one of those people who is so solidly _himself_ that he makes other people more real just by focusing on them. He could pin you down. He could make you feel like you were really here, in your own skin, in your own life.

Fuck. It hurts. You want it.

You shudder all over, and hate yourself, and listen in.

“It’s got to be connected,” shades is saying. “I was sick too. Bro didn’t have insurance and he had to sweat it out in our shitty apartment. The heat was broken that spring, too. I just remember him piling blankets on me when I had the chills, and lukewarm baths when my temperature got too high. Fuck that -- that was the worst.”

“I had that too!” cries blue-eyes. “My dad did the same thing. I thought I was dying.” He scrubs a hand through his hair in frustration, making it even messier. “But I don’t understand the connection. What even happened? And if we both have those memories, why can’t I remember more about you?”

“I don’t know, dude,” says blondie. He hesitates, and his low voice is soft enough that you strain to listen. “Did... did you have dreams after you were sick?”

“Dreams like what?

“Like... I dunno. I used to get them all the time.” Blue-eyes waits with more patience than you have. “Well, I still have them, really. But I used to have them every fucking night. My bro dead with a sword in his chest, just stuck there like in a pincushion. Fuck.” You see in your peripheral vision that he rubs his hands over his face. “I don’t even know where I got the idea, but it started while I was sick. Every night I had the same goddamn dream until -- I don’t know, until I was in high school, then it was just a few times a week, less and less until now it’s only like once a month. But shit, it’s awful.”

The other is leaning forward, his eyes wide behind his glasses with such extravagant sympathy that you almost flinch. You don’t know how he can bear to put so much of himself on display. You don’t know how either of them can.

“I can deal with them now,” says shades. “It’s still like a kick in the gut each time -- still makes me feel like I’m thirteen and powerless. But I can handle it. Back then, though? I would just scream and scream in my sleep until he woke me up and I saw he was alive. Jesus, he even slept on the floor in my room for a few months. Here I was, almost fifteen years old and afraid to sleep alone. He never gave me shit about it, either.” He laughs at himself briefly, sourly. “Christ, I don’t even know why I’m telling you this -- I’ve never told anybody before.”

You’re trespassing. (You’re trembling. There have been too many dreams that you made yourself forget. What the _fuck_.) You stare at your screen, long since gone to screen-saver, and you reach out to tap it awake.

Blue-eyes just nods solemnly. “Did you ever feel --” He hesitates, weighing words, then plunges on -- “Did you ever feel like something was missing? After you were sick?”

“Yeah,” says shades. “Yeah, I did.”

“I never had dreams like yours, but I had this feeling -- just, forever -- that I’d lost something. Or someone. Or a whole chunk of my life, a bunch of people I used to know and do stuff with...” He shakes his head in frustration but you want to urge him on, because _yes_ , you feel the same way. “I don’t even know, I can’t even remember, but like there was supposed to be _more._ There were supposed to be people -- I was supposed to have _friends._ I wasn’t supposed to be so fucking lonely.”

“Yes,” whispers shades. _Yes,_ you think.

Blue-eyes looks up at him, eyes full. “God, look at us,” he says, and there’s a throb of desperation in his voice. “Like soldiers with PTSD from a war we can’t even remember.”

This is hitting too close, hurting too much, you can’t even explain to yourself why there’s a roaring in your head and how desperately you want to be drawn into their little circle of two. But how would you even start, how would you even breach the immeasurable distance between your table and theirs, how would you ever dare to make yourself so vulnerable. They are orbiting each other in a tight perfect circuit and you’re on the outside with your heart in your throat, and there’s no way in.

It hurts, Christ it hurts, you reach blindly for the volume of your music and turn it up, too far up.

They’re still talking, you don’t want to hear, don’t want to know, but they may as well be on a different planet for all the attention they’re paying to anyone but each other, both leaning in now, and as you watch in horror you see one glass-shard tear slip down from a bright blue eye.

The blond leans forward on his elbows, smooth as oil, pushing his shades to the top of his head -- you can’t see his eyes, you don’t want to -- and reaches out one long-fingered hand to touch the other’s face. His thumb strokes up under the edge of the rectangular glasses, brushes the tear away.

He says something you can’t hear. Blue-eyes is tremblingly still.

You miss Gamzee like there’s a knife in your chest. You close your eyes, and keep them closed for long minutes.

There’s movement beside you, coats and bags collected. They’re leaving. Fucking finally. Maybe now you can get some work done. Shades bumps your table again as he shuffles past, but he doesn’t look at you this time, not even when you glare up at him. Blue-eyes gives you a cursory glance, but he’s not really looking -- he’s saying something, pulling his phone out of his pocket.

They take their mugs and walk away. (You squash down the voice inside you crying _no wait come back._ ) You watch them put their cups in the bin by the trash can. They both have their phones out, heads bent close together so they can hear each other in the noisy cafe. They’re exchanging numbers.

The phones go back in their pockets. Shades settles his messenger bag over his hip; blue-eyes zips up his coat. They don’t look back at you when they leave.

If you crane your neck you can see them on the sidewalk. They pause there, perfectly matched in height, dark and fair, a little island while people stream around them. You supply the dialogue in your head, like a scene from your shitty story: _I’m going this way, yeah, I’m going that way._ What next? _Nice to meet you? See you later? I’ll call you soon?_

You don’t see who makes the first move, but they step together and hug, quick and hard, and then they’re gone.

You slump at your table, exhausted, strings cut. You think you might be wrecked for work for the rest of the day. You dig in your bag and pull out a notebook of looseleaf instead. It’s been too long since you’ve written Gamz a proper letter. He’ll be up for parole in a year and a half, and then he’ll have, what, a few years of probation before you can get him to move his sorry ass up here with you? It’s not that long to wait. If he flies straight. If you haven’t given up and gone back home by then.

You finish your letter, you finish your coffee, you spend a while on the internet reading too many stories of love and loss and loneliness, and then you walk. You look for them everywhere, blond and dark, but they’re gone as if you dreamed them. You walk the city for hours, earbuds jammed in place and your music pouring in your ears and your whole heart pouring out through your eyes. You wonder why you don’t incinerate everyone in your path. No one looks at you twice. Again and again the world breaks your heart, and again and again you stand up for the breaking, because there’s nothing else you can do.

 


	3. Jade: when you leave

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _turn off the lights when you leave_  
>  _cause we've got everything we're gonna need_  
>  \- Lucius, [Two Of Us On The Run](http://youtu.be/ykNn34N4lJM)

The world ends when you are thirteen.

You know it ends because you dream it. (You know you are thirteen because you have a computer, and a calendar, and you have done the math very carefully.) You dream for days and nights on end, dreaming of fire falling from the sky, of the world splitting open at the seams, crackling into static and nothingness, over and over and over again.

When you wake up you are so weak that it takes two hours to get downstairs to the kitchen. You are so thin that your clothes are falling off you. But Bec stays beside you, looking up at you with his big dark doggy eyes, and you lean hard on him as you crawl across the long expanse of kitchen floor toward the pantry where the canned goods are.

You eat half a can of beans, then you feed Bec the rest, and he scarfs it down eagerly enough that you worry that he didn’t eat anything while you were dreaming either, so you feed him another can’s worth. He wags his tail and licks your face with a tongue that smells like beans and dog breath and goes off to do whatever it is he likes to do.

You take a nap on the kitchen floor.

It takes days, but you get your strength back, and you explore your house like you’ve never seen it before. It’s full of machinery that doesn’t work. You can’t remember if it ever worked. You can’t remember if your grandpa ever told you what it was for.

When you come upon your grandpa himself, stuffed and mounted in the trophy room, cartoonishly grotesque, obviously done by a child, you back away in horror, close the door, and don’t go back in for a long time.

You avoid the broken robot shaped like you, too.

Your computers are dead, all the ones you usually use. You finally dig out an old laptop that can connect to your satellite wifi and it slowly, slowly accesses the internet. You scan over news; you google “meteors,” google “apocalypse,” and find nothing. Maybe the world ended and nobody noticed. Maybe everyone is living in a collective post-world dream.

Maybe the world was a dream, and now it’s over, and you’re living in something else entirely.

You talk to Bec, you talk to yourself, you watch videos of people (low-fi, full of stops and starts as your ancient computer tries to load) and you talk to them. Bec gives you a puzzled doggy look. Occasionally you find yourself expecting him to act differently, or you’re surprised when he just trots alongside you as you pick your way around the island, but he’s just a dog, and you’re not sure why you would think otherwise.

Sometimes you yell at the top of your lungs until you’re hoarse, just to break the silence for a little while. Sometimes you wish you could sleep for days.

Loneliness is the air you breathe, the blood in your veins.

When you dream now, you walk through the corridors of a silent city, abandoned and colorless, and you’re looking for the people who were supposed to be there with you. You have the growing feeling that they are somewhere up ahead of you but always just out of sight, always one turn ahead, and you run and run, flinging yourself around corners and along alleyways and over bridges on dried-up canals, but you never catch up to them, and they fade away like everything else.

When you are seventeen, the food starts to run out.

Perhaps your grandpa never meant for you to stay this long. Perhaps he meant to take you away, or he meant to replenish his stores. Certainly he didn’t mean to die on you. You wonder if there was something important he told you and you were just too little to remember. You open the door to his study for the first time in years and start going through his papers. You find account numbers, phone numbers, names and addresses. The family solicitor. The family accountant. There’s a bank in Switzerland, another in New York. There’s money that has gone untouched for a long time.

You close the drawer, close the door, and you think hard for a good long while.

Bec is slowing down, his eyes going milky with cataracts, and he shuffles along beside you now as you prowl your island, or waits on the doorstep for you to return, snoozing in the sun. The island feels smaller than it ever has, and you spend hours watching the empty horizon.

One day you wake up, and Bec doesn’t.

You sit beside him for a long time and bury your hands in his white shaggy fur, smell his familiar dandery old-dog smell. Then you stand up and dust yourself off and you go get some papers from your grandfather’s study. You open your computer, open Skype, and make some phone calls.

Then you curl up around Bec where he lies like he’s sleeping, and you put your face against his neck and you cry.

After lunch you find a shovel in the shed, and you go out to the prettiest spot in the yard, the place where you used to have picnics with your dolls, the place where you used to lie and read books out loud to Bec while he ran after butterflies and birds. You start to dig. You dig until you have a deep dog-sized hole, and then you keep digging. You dig until the callouses on your hands ache, until you have blisters under your callouses and blood under your fingernails. It gets dark, and the moon rises, a lovely fragrant starlit tropical evening like every night of your life, and you’re hungry and tired but you don’t stop until the hole is big enough to bury everything you have loved most.

You go into the house and you find the two biggest sheets you can find. In one, you wrap Bec, and, staggering under his weight, you carry him to the hole, climb carefully in, and pull him in after you.

Then you take the other sheet and you go to the trophy room.

Your grandfather is there still, dusty and bespectacled and not so horrible, really, not like you remember. Just once, you step up close to him -- you’ve gotten tall enough that you can only just tuck your head under his chin -- and put your arms around him. He doesn’t smell like anything, just the old wool of his jacket, and dust.

Then you drape the sheet around him and drag him toward the door.

It’s awkward to get him down into the hole you dug without dropping him, but you manage eventually, muscles trembling with exhaustion. You arrange him and Bec carefully together in the bottom of the hole. You guess by the stars that it’s nearly midnight, but you fill in the hole, first by lifting one shovelful at a time, then by pushing dirt in great heaps with your hands and feet.

The birds are waking toward the tropical dawn when you finish, filthy and exhausted, and you drop where you are and sleep on their grave.

Four days later you hear a hum that’s not an insect and not an animal and not a storm wind. It grows to a loud rattle and finally resolves into the _thud-thud-thud_ of a propeller as the helicopter sets itself down in your yard. You watch from the doorway, dressed in your favorite skirt, your grandfather’s pith helmet shading your eyes, an old duffel bag on the ground beside you.

The helicopter pilot doesn’t speak any English, and it’s a shame that you don’t know what language he’s speaking, because he is the first real person you’ve seen since your grandfather died, and you are curious and excited and shy and scared all at once. You talk in rough miming sign language while he helps you into your seat and gets you buckled in. In the strangeness of being near a human being, in the shock of his size and noise and presence and realness, you almost miss the moment when the helicopter lifts off the ground.

You press your face to the window and watch the island get smaller and smaller until it’s a small dark lump against the blue, and then you’re not really sure if you can see it at all, or if you’re just imagining, and then it’s really gone. You cry a little for Bec, for your grandfather, for your house and your plants and all the things that have circumscribed your life. But you also feel like you’ve taken all those things and put them safely away in a box, and locked the box and hidden it away. It’s still there; everything is still there. It’ll still be there when you return for it.

The helicopter takes you to a cargo ship far out at sea, and though it looks like a toy covered in lego blocks when you first spot it far off, it grows to a massive towering floating city. As the helicopter lands, as you see little smudgy shapes resolve into actual people, you think your heart might fly right into your throat.

The helicopter pilot hops out and talks with someone while you struggle out of your seatbelt. By the time you climb down with your bag, they’re shaking hands, then the pilot turns and shakes _your_ hand -- rough calloused skin, palm to palm, shake shake shake -- and scrambles back into the helicopter with a thumbs-up. Then the new person, person number three in your life, different also-here also-real person, takes you gently by the elbow and draws you away from the landing pad. She says her name is Corporal Willis, and you say your name is Jade Harley. The helicopter pilot doesn’t look back at you as he takes off and buzzes away.

Your stomach twists with the strangeness of it. He was with you for a few hours, and now he’s not. You can still feel the feeling of his palm against yours, the grip of his fingers, and it takes a long time for the memory of that touch to fade.

Corporal Willis speaks to you in English, and you answer her in words, though they feel strange in your mouth. You are shown to a little cabin all for you. You see lots more people on the way, a dozen or more -- men, women, big people, small people, speaking many different languages to each other. The woman guiding you around says something before she leaves you in your cabin, then looks at you a little strangely -- maybe you were supposed to say something back? Maybe you weren’t supposed to give her a hug?

The thought of how much you have to learn makes your head spin.

When you’re in your cabin, you feel caged in; when you’re exploring the ship, you feel strange and lonely and looked-at. You find a spot at the top of a stack of containers that you can clamber up to by ladder, where no one can see you and you’re sheltered from the smell of exhaust. There you sit for hours with nothing for company but the sky and the wind and the great rumble of the engines, the ship’s motion transmuted into a gentle sway, and you think about the fact that there are human beings nearby who know your name.

The crew are polite and helpful and don’t seem to know what to do with you. You don’t know what to do with them, so it’s all fair.

You arrive in the port of Honolulu late on the third night. Groggy with exhaustion and spinny with adrenaline, you are dizzied by the city lights as the little motorboat takes you and a few others into the harbor. You know how many people there are in the world but you have never been able to visualize so many together, not really.

There’s a man in a dark suit waiting to meet you in the harbor. He shakes your hand -- you’ve learned that rule at least, palm to palm, not too tight, shake shake shake -- and introduces himself as Mr. Stanton, the executor of your grandfather’s estate, flown all the way to Hawaii from New York on such short notice. He goes on and on as your bag is loaded into the long low black car, and then you are loaded in as well: his firm was surprised and delighted to receive your call, they had long ago written off your grandfather’s fate as a mystery, so sorry incidentally to hear about your loss. His words blur and fizz in your ears, like the lights of the city rushing by.

You blink in the bright lights of the hotel lobby, and sleep in the vast white bed as if you might never wake up.

In the morning there’s breakfast for you in the hotel restaurant, a baffling array of choices on the menu. Mr. Stanton-the-executor-of-your-grandfather’s-estate laughs at you gently and suggests some eggs and toast. There are people everywhere, talking and laughing -- enough people that they crowd each other out in your mind. You’re beginning to forget the helicopter pilot’s face, and the face of the woman who greeted you on the cargo ship. You squeeze your eyes shut and fix your grandfather’s face, the smell of Bec’s shaggy fur, firmly in your mind.

The waiter who puts your plate in front of you smiles at you with dimples in her cheeks and winks. You feel yourself blush up to the roots of your hair.

The long black car takes you to an airfield where there’s a jet waiting for you. Mr. Stanton shows you to your seat, plush and cushy, next to a window. There’s a nice young man who asks if you’d like anything to drink while waiting for take-off, and you ask for some juice. He serves in a tall cut-crystal glass that you’re a little afraid you might spill, so you drink it down quickly.

And then the plane takes off, leaving Hawaii behind. On the other side of the plane, Mr. Stanton opens a compartment and a clever folding desk comes down in front of his seat. He opens his briefcase, takes out a slim laptop, and begins tapping away immediately. You mimic his motions, opening out your own desk and retrieving your trusty old laptop. Perhaps you’ll get a new one soon, you think when you see Mr. Stanton eyeing it.

You open a new text document and you start a list:

 

_Grandpa_

_Becquerel (Bec)_

_the helicopter pilot (I don’t know his name)_

_Corporal Willis (from the ship)_

_others from the ship_

_Mr. Stanton_

_the waitress from the hotel in Honolulu (I don’t know her name either)_

_the attendant on the airplane * remember to ask his name_

 

And then you look at the cursor blinking at you, and you wonder why the list feels incomplete.

There are movies you can watch on the plane, and television programs. You watch videos until you fall asleep, and when you wake up the plane is flying over green land, wide enough that you can’t see an end to it. The plane is still high enough that you can hardly see any details below you, but there are smudges of darker and lighter green, white and silver threads that might be roads and rivers, and flecks of confetti scattered here and there. You close your eyes and open them again and the light has changed; you close and open them again to darkness outside your window, and the flight attendant is closing your folding desk and asking you to fasten your seatbelt.

Out the window, there are so many lights, and when you realize that they’re houses and streetlights and buildings you feel sick to your stomach with the impossibility of it. There are people in every single building. Every single lightbulb was placed by a human being. How do all of them live? How do they keep track of themselves? How do they remember everything, and how do they deal with the forgetting?

The jostling of the plane landing shocks you down to your core. There’s another limo to pick you up, another ride to a hotel, another door for you to lock and a huge white bed that you couldn’t possibly take up on your own. You sleep fitfully. The room is too quiet, and when you wake for the fifth time in the night with no sound of night insects and ocean breezes rattling through palm fronds, you crumble a little with homesickness.

The next day, the limo picks you up and takes you into the city. You’ve stopped trying to keep track of the number of people you’ve seen and instead you look at buildings, at bridges, at cars and buses and bicycles and all the things you’ve seen on the internet but never in real life. You watch a delivery truck nudge down a street so tiny that you’re sure there must be extra-dimensional physics involved. You watch an endless fleet of yellow taxis, streaming down every avenue. You look up at buildings so tall that your stomach does a slow flip of wonder and dread.

You watch a woman go up on her tiptoes to kiss a man, right there in front of you. You see people shake hands. You watch one person reach out to touch another’s arm, and you see them both watch the car go by close to the curb, and you understand. You watch people acknowledge each other and ignore each other and talk to each other as if it isn’t purely miraculous that bodies exist in relation to each other, that signals can be sent and received and deciphered, that you are all here in the same place at the same time.

The people hardly seem to realize, because if they did, they’d be doing what you feel like doing, which is screaming and laughing and dancing and crying, all at the same time. Perhaps they feel the same way you do on the inside and are just better at hiding it.

The limousine takes you to one of the tall buildings and you are shown to a room with a vast wooden table. Mr. Stanton is there, as are a number of other men in dark suits. They talk to you in voices like you’re a child, in simplified words that get simpler the more you frown at them, until you stand up and tell them all to stop explaining. They look at you in stunned silence. You’ve done the math, you tell them, and you’ve read about investing and inheritance law, and you know what you want. You’ve had a long time to think about this, after all.

After that, things begin to move pretty fast.

You decide to stay near New York, because it excites you and scares you, but not too near. Your real estate agent -- you have a _real estate agent_ \-- takes you to see a gorgeous old stone house on lots of acres of wooded land in a place everyone calls “upstate,” and the minute you step out of her car it feels like home. You buy furniture and food and you get the fastest internet access money can buy, and you decide you’ll start with three computers and go from there.

Behind your house is a patch free of trees where the sun shines all afternoon. You plant a garden.

Sometimes you go to the city for a few days at a time. You explore, trying food you’ve never tasted, looking in the shop windows, watching the unending stream of faces. Even after the novelty of being around humans wears off, you keep looking at faces, one after another, every chance you get. It’s as if you’re looking for something but you’re not sure what it is.

Other times you stay at your house, learning its eccentricities, the creaky floorboards and the windows where the breeze blows in. You explore the woods around your house. The flora and fauna are so different from your island, and you spend hours poring over guidebooks, learning the trees, the birds, the rocks.

You start taking online courses. You get your GED, and start stacking up credits toward a college degree: physics, linear algebra, astronomy, differential calculus, discrete math.

You think maybe you’ll get a dog, but it always stays a thought, a daydream, just like your dream of going back to your island someday.

You live.

When you are twenty, the doorbell rings one morning. You put down your book and go to the front door, and open it.

There on the doorstep is a girl your age with sleek short blonde hair. She’s holding a pie in her hands and she says, _Hello, I’m your neighbor, I’m sorry it took so long to --_

And then her eyes lift to yours and the words die on her lips. Her eyes are lavender, deep and rich and true.

The dish falls from her hands and shatters on the stone.

_Jade_ , she says, and it’s not a question, it’s the answer to everything.

And your ears are full of the sound of meteors falling and the world ending and not ending, of everything being different and the same, and you’re on your knees in the ruins of a cherry pie with your arms around her, crying and laughing though you hardly know why, and trying to say everything at the same time. You’ve never seen her before, but you know that she’s the most important person you’ve ever met.

_Jade_ , she says, leaning back in the circle of your arms, beaming through the tear tracks on her face, _I knew I would find you, I just didn’t know when._

_How did you know?_ you say.

_I’ve been remembering since it happened,_ she says. _Only fragments at first, but then more and more. I think it’s because I’m the seer of light. I think the game couldn’t completely rewrite my memories -- it couldn’t hide itself from me. And I’ve been looking for you -- I’ve been looking for all of you._

Game? you want to say. Light, and memories? But all you can say is, _All of us?_

_You and the boys,_ she says, and a smile lights her face. _I knew you’d be off the grid so I wasn’t surprised when I couldn’t contact you, but I had no idea how much trouble it would be to find them, even once I had their names. Dave and his brother seem to be as unlisted as you can be in the age of internet. and you’d be shocked how many John Egberts there are out there. It’s like the game is trying to keep us apart even now._

John Egbert. Your heart twangs like a plucked string.

_But I might finally have a lead on John. I’ve been trying to think of how to contact him without it being too creepy, but now that you’re here, we can all --_

She stops, looking closely at you. _Jade?_ she says, slowly. _How much do you remember?_

She is so hopeful, and you want to give her the right answer, but you can only shake your head. _I don’t know your name. I’m sorry._

Her face falls, just a little, like she doesn’t really want you to see, but she takes a brave breath, and then her smile comes back, shy. _Rose,_ she says. _I’m Rose Lalonde. I’ve been your friend since we were kids. We played a game together, and we lost._

Her eyes are wide and bright, and you don’t ever want to look at anything else. _Jade_ , she says, then, laughing, _Jade,_ like she can’t ever say it enough times. _I can’t believe you’re here. I can’t believe we found each other._

Her hands are tight on your upper arms, and you are clinging to her for your life. Also there’s cherry pie filling soaking into the knees of her tights and your jeans. She looks down, chagrined, and you laugh.

_Come inside,_ you say. _Tell me everything._

 


	4. Dave: hello blackbird

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _long time coming but now, the snow is gone_  
>  -[Josh Ritter](https://youtu.be/NJZiojEGuy0)

John squints through the sleet that’s making ugly slashes across the windshield. The wipers on the little Zipcar are struggling valiantly, but they’re poorly matched against the disgusting weather. The digital clock on the dashboard says 7:32, then 7:33. You’re more than an hour late. You sigh loudly.

“Ok, smartass,” says John, though you haven’t said a word. Recently. “I tried to tell her this wouldn’t be a good day for driving.”

“It’s a fine day for driving, if you’d just drive faster than the average grandma,” you say.

“Easy for you to say, Mr. I-don’t-even-have-my-license-because-I’m-a-dumb-hipster-who-only-deigns-to-live-in-urban-centers-and-mooches-off-his-roommate-for-rides.”

“See? My name’s way too long to fit on a driver’s license. You’re winning my argument for me, bro.”

He makes a rude noise at you, then peers at his phone. “I think -- yes! Here’s the turn-off.”

“Jesus, finally. I thought we’d be lost in the woods forever. Who even lives in upstate New York?” You’re now trundling past houses instead of unbroken banks of trees.

“Hippies and weird spooky girls who call you out of the blue and tell you they know you, apparently,” he says, slowing down to look at street signs. The little town is nearly deserted, with only a few other cars inching by on the slippery roads. You hope for the spooky girl’s sake that it’s just the weather making this place so dead on a Saturday night. “Maple Street. This is it.”

A few minutes later he’s coasting to a stop in front of one of the only brightly-lit storefronts on the row of shops. You look up at the sign as he kills the engine. Hand-painted in curly letters is _Skaia Books._ The tail of the S squiggles into a mandala pattern, a spirograph. You shiver and put on your shades, even though it’s pitch-dark outside. Sometimes a man needs armor and that’s all there is to it.

You put up your umbrella for the ten-foot walk to the door. John ducks his head and dashes through the sleet, then stands in the shelter of the awning and shakes himself like a dog while you fold up your umbrella. You reach out to try to settle the hopeless mess of his hair, and he ducks and takes a swipe at your shades, which leads to a brief and ridiculous slap-fight.

“Now you’re just stalling,” you say.

He takes a deep breath and puffs out his cheeks. “Yeah.” He turns the doorknob. “Here goes.”

A bell tinkles over your heads as you enter the shop. It’s cozy and warmly lit, all gleaming bright wood shelves and oriental rugs, philodendrons drooping their tendrils down from pots on high shelves. It’s the kind of place where you expect a cat to twine around your ankles, or a goddamn portal to a fantasy land to open when you pull out the right book.

A woman perches on a stool behind the desk at the side of the shop, and she looks up from her book as you come in. She’s got a pile of black hair tied up in a messy bun on top of her head, stuck through with pencils. She pushes her big round glasses up her nose.

Something about the gesture ties your stomach in a knot.

Beside you, John is frozen. “I’m,” he says, then “You’re,” but before he can get any farther, she picks up the phone on the desk and hits a single button.

“They’re here,” she says into the receiver and hangs up.

You’re desperately trying to figure out where you know her from when your thoughts are interrupted by the clatter of footsteps overhead.

Someone is running down the staircase against the wall behind you, and you turn in time to see her freeze halfway down the stairs. She claps both hands over her mouth, then sits down hard on the step behind her.

She’s pale like you, white-blonde like you, narrow face, delicate wrists, long fingers. Wide-set eyes. The bridge of her nose is exactly the same as your bro’s.

You have taken two steps forward without realizing it. “Rose,” you hear yourself choke out.

And then she drops her hands and smiles at you with your own smile, eyes swimming bright with tears, and you take the three steps toward her and she practically falls down the rest of the stairs and into your arms.

***

A half-hour later the four of you are packed into the tiny living room of their apartment above the shop, sitting in a close circle on the braided rug as if you’d decided tacitly that the little loveseat and rocking chairs would put you too far apart from each other.

You look around and you can see the perfect balance the four of you make. Jade gesticulates wildly, talking too loud like John does when he gets excited. Her black hair is slipping down from her bun into long crazy tendrils around her face. John watches her, grinning frankly, looking around to share your enjoyment of the story Jade is telling. Rose is sitting close to Jade’s side, their fingers intertwined, but her stockinged foot is outstretched and pressed flat to the outside of your leg. Your hand sits lightly on her ankle, just a reminder of her presence, her solidity. She catches your eye and smiles, dimpling deeply.

You don’t really understand how you know them, but you know that you do. 

***

Another hour later, or maybe more. You’ve drained your mug of tea and set it aside; Rose’s is half-empty and forgotten, cold. Jade keeps toying with the lace of your shoe, then grinning at you, then at John.

John looks wide-eyed and gobsmacked as you feel, embarrassed by riches.

The story Rose is telling would be completely absurd if not for the way that it takes the shreds of dreams and memories that have been floating unmoored in your brain for half your life and weaves them into a comprehensible whole. Hearing her talk is like finally _finally_ scratching an itch, sneezing the sneeze that’s been stuck in your nose all day. Or, really, all your life.

When her voice winds down at last, you all sit still for a moment. The wind outside could be the howling of the universe breaking apart around you.

“So what do we do now?” John asks into the quiet.

“Get therapy,” says Rose. John snorts.

“I say we all move in together!” says Jade.

“Moving fast there, Harley,” you say. It just slips out, like you’ve known her forever.

“Just try keeping up with me, time bro,” she says with a grin.

“That might be cool,” says John, all casual, like he’s not getting ready to burst with excitement. You can see it in the way his hands won’t keep still.

You glance at Rose, half-expecting her to shoot everything down, but she’s got a little smile on and a tiny crease between her eyebrows, considering hard. Her eyes meet yours. “I like Boston,” she says.

All unbidden, your heart gives a little leap.

John and Jade bound up, squawking at each other and making ridiculous farfetched plans already. They are such a perfect mirror image of each other, crackling with energy, hearts on sleeves.

Rose looks at you levelly. Good God, you hardly know her, and you’d lay down your life — your sword — for this girl. For your sister. You have a sister.

“Works for me,” you say, and she smiles.


End file.
